I like their choice... the BGA chips seem to provide enough headroom from the speed standpoint, and are obviously cheaper than DDRII. If more manufacturers start using BGA, I wouldn't be surprised to see DDR800 by the time AMD DDRII is affordable.Reply

Hm. I thought that GDDR3 was just a variation on the DDR3 standard, just as GDDR2 was a variation on DDR2- so I didn't see a need to specify (thinking the main benefits of the standards would carry across both variations). Looking into things, I see that you're right- GDDR3 is still based on DDR2 and its improvements aren't as well suited for main module use. Humbug.Reply

I think you are confusing DDR3 with GDDR3. GDDR3 (which is available now) is pretty much identical to DDR2 but with better power and heat capabilities. Actual DDR3 for motherboards does not have any working prototypes.

I have no idea why Kubicki writes that AMD will move to DDR2 for BGA after Anandtech just reviewed BGA DDR1 modules from Kingmax (http://anandtech.com/memory/showdoc.html?i=1990). AMD is right- DDR2 brings few enough benefits that one shouldn't break compatibility for it. DDR3 appears to be looking good, though (reviews of the NV 5700U with DDR3 have just come in and the difference in power draw and heat vs the ddr2 version is pretty huge; DDR3 should scale up a lot better than ddr2).Reply

High capacity modules aren't pointless for some people, but the rest of us will be better off with lower latency DDR memory rather than DDR2. At least while its both cheaper as well as faster we will be.Reply

"After all, you can't build 4GB DIMMs on DDR1 TSOP like you can with DDR2 BGA. Hynix and Micron are already capable of 1GB DDR2 DIMMs."

You can have DDR1 BGAs- Kingston make them. There are also 1GB DDR1 DIMMs from corsair and OCZ.

The story about the latency is that it is supposedly nullified by the 4byte (cf 2 in DDR1) prefetch. But that gain may not help with apps where the associated bytes to the target byte may be irrelevant. So I await the tests on the real stuff. At double the cost if it is equivalent performance, it will be struggling. So I think AMD's move is wise and everything seems in place for a resurgence in sales over H2'03/H1'04.Reply